I'm not sure if I've read William Gibson before. I got this book at a garage sale years ago. Finally got round to reading it and it was a bit of a let-down. Maybe it was edgier when it first came out, but it didn't seem to do much other than portray a dystopian future with not a hell of a lot else. Maybe I haven't even finished it - I can't remember the ending, it's such a non-book. It kept promising but didn't really deliver, to sum up.
A bit about Gibson.
Born in 1948, Gibson is American-Canadian and is the God of cyberpunk - regardless of who is actually credited with starting cyberpunk. He's thought to have predicted the internet - world wide web - no freakin mean feat since barely any other SF personage has managed to do so. He moved around a lot as a kid, read a lot of SF, evaded the Vietnam War draft by emigrating to Canadia (thank goodness, says the SF community), became immersed in counterculture - although exactly what that consists of, who knows? I apparently did that - big whoop as far as I'm concerned… He's also involved in the early emergence of Steampunk - a genre that I love. He is one of the movers and shakers of cyber literature and tech-culture. The man is pretty freaking COOL by all counts. He has influenced countless movies, bands and writers.
The more I read his bio, the more interested I am in reading more of his stuff despite my meh feelings from VL. It's worth just reading his bio for the wow-factor. Enough of William, onto the novel.
A future Earth with much poverty and overcrowding - kind of like a Blade Runner movie feel to it. I kept getting the feel of a very overcrowded and techno-sized ghetto. One of the two main characters, (three if you count the city or bridge), Chevette, is a bicycle courier, who 'proj's' round the city, delivering packages. (the use of 'proj' as slang for 'moving') really jarred with me, although Gibson includes in his acknowledgements a reference to a bicycle guy who helped him get the courier lingo down right. She lives in what I gathered was a shipping container-like city on the remains of the San Francisco bridge - which collapsed in a huge earthquake. She was rescued by this guy, Skinner, who's kind of one of the long-term residents who seems to have been around in our time and is nifty at salvaging desired flotsam from the past that sells for a good price. Rescued in that, when she left her shitty mother and came to SF, she was near death from illness and Skinner took her back to his place and saved her. Purely platonic from what I can see, BTW. So Chevette has to deliver something to someone one night in a classy building that is also having a very high class party. In an uncharacteristic move, Chevette nicks a pair of sunglasses from the back pocket of a sleazy executive-type a the party.
This act provides the motivation for the rest of the events in the book. Basically, they're 'magic' sunglasses - they are virtual reality sunglasses. COOL! I thought, what's she going to see? Is it going to be dangerous? futuristic? cyberpunkish? Well, it's kind of dangerous and kind of futuristic but so incredibly boring that I really hope it was cool at the time of writing. You can see the plans that a bunch of developers are making to redo the city up and make it rich and exclusive. That's it - the glasses are only really used that once to see these 'blueprints' and then that's it as far as awesome virtual sunglasses go.
Both main characters were really interesting and had great backstories. There were a couple of other side-characters who were also interesting.
The other main character is a late 20s guy, Berry Rydell who is a little too impulsive to work as a policeman and has moved into security, where, again, he proves a little too emotion-driven to be able to do the job the way the bosses want. At first he's set up like hard-boiled kind of detective/policeman guy. He's likeable and he has a crush on Chevette once they meet up. He is moved to SF because he's gone and killed someone he probably shouldn't have while on duty and is working for a security firm where he crashes into a house in a crime scene that's probably a set-up and so he's moved over into their less legit area of security. He's given an assignment with two guys searching for these glasses - ostensibly just for the girl who they claim killed someone. So Chevette's on the run cause she gets tracked down as the likely candidate and her bestie from work (one of the two interesting side-characters) is shot. She turns to her kind-of boyfriend who appears to an arsehole who deal drugs, the main drug of choice being dancer and he kind of brushes her off. She would at this point be entirely lost and decides to head out of town until … plot mover! ... she is found by the baddies and lots of shooting happens and what-not until Rydell defies his co-workers and the Russian mafia guys and hit man who are all also chasing Chevette and flees the shoot-out with Chevette in a car.
So, they're on the run, visiting Chevette's ex, Rydell's old security pal, Sublett (the other interesting side-character) and Sublett's mother. Sublett is allergic to nearly everything, an albino and likes to quote old movies at Rydell. He's part of a religious sect that thinks tv will save your soul. See - he's interesting.
Then Rydell hooks up with the 'Republic of Desire' three people who appear to exist nearly completely in the virtual world and pull a Deus Ex Machina to help Rydell and Chevette expose the nefarious plot to swankify San Fran and get themselves all off scot-free. That's it. End of the party.
This was written in 1993 and was nominated for a Hugo. I have just read that it's the first in the three-parter 'Bridge' trilogy. The Bridge, I'm assuming, is a symbol of the link between the past and future, old and new, blah blah. I think VL was a letdown overall - where's the virtual reality? It's there near the end, but only Rydell accesses it, which makes it too exclusive and inaccessible to the reader. The title is evocative of these futuristic and amazing sunglasses that only a few people have access to which you see for about half a page in the book. So it's more a metaphor I suppose for the reality of SF and the exclusively rich who think the poor are rabid criminals, ready to rape and pillage and murder at any chance. The poor are just doin their thing, trying to get by. The reality is a lot plainer and pedestrian. Chevette and Rydell both end up liking each other - helps that they're both young and good-lookin, don't it? The Republic of Desire sounds highly promising but again ends up being not much of anything that the reader can really get into - it's all Rydell's business and we watch on.
Gibson really is a great writer, which makes the story readable, and I think I'll be going for Neuromancer next in the Gibson oeuvre, although I've got a copy of Pattern Recognition. Actually, maybe I'll actually do Difference Engine next - one of the first Steampunkers. But Virtual Light - I'm giving it 5 out of 10. If he was a shitty writer, I would have given it 3.
1 comment:
I really enjoyed your honest review. I am a hardcore Gibson fan and read it when it first came out. My first reaction was similar to yours. I was actually so disappointed that I threw the book across the room. The whole plot seemed like a cheesy B movie that Sublett’s, trailer park clan would have been glued to. But then it hit me. That is the point. Reality is between the pixels. Like Escher or Bach, the story is as much in the Ground as in the Figure. What if the main plot line is just a distraction. What is all the reference to viruses, autoimmune disorders, allergies about? Mistaken security responses? Mistaken identity and control? What is fiction anyway? And what is meta fiction? Why does Burroughs say language is a virus? Why is Gibson a Burroughs fan? What is the role of fiction in paving our reality? What is the nature of our distopia, and why did Orwell call it 1984 when he wrote it on 1948? Why does the courier drink Comeback Salmon vodka instead of Victory Gin? Or watch virtual light rather than avoid being watched by the telescreen? What’s the difference? And what’s the deal with the old lady driving the mobile home? It’s all apophenia. Or is it?
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